Mar­ket for veni­son to stay strong

Veni­son prices are ex­pected to con­tinue their record-break­ing run as high de­mand con­tin­ues from key mar­kets in Europe and North Amer­ica.

The veni­son price sched­ule tra­di­tion­ally peaked in spring while de­mand from Euro­pean mar­kets was at its high­est be­fore eas­ing off in Novem­ber. Deer In­dus­try New Zea­land (DINZ) pas­sion to profit man­ager Innes Mof­fatt said the sched­ule had sur­prised ev­ery­one by lift­ing post-Christ­mas.

The North Is­land sched­ule for veni­son is at about $10 a kilo­gram and $11/kg for the South Is­land.

‘‘This time last year the sched­ule was $8/kg which was high, well above the long term av­er­age, so we’re cur­rently sit­ting $2-$2.50/kg above the pre­vi­ous high for this time of year.

‘‘It is re­ward­ing farm­ers who are able to sup­ply deer to good spec­i­fi­ca­tion at this time of year.’’

Mof­fatt said the high prices were from con­tin­ued strong de­mand from Europe for frozen veni­son and small amounts of chilled veni­son be­ing ex­ported at good prices.

There had also been a sub­stan­tial in­crease in co-prod­ucts - meat and bone meal and veni­son trim - mainly go­ing to the North Amer­i­can mar­ket and Europe. This in­cluded pet food and veni­son mince for ham­burg­ers.

‘‘There’s good di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in some of those mar­kets and a very sub­stan­tial in­crease in the value of some of those prod­ucts.’’

Last month DINZ chief ex­ec­u­tive Dan Coup said trim and me­chan­i­cally de-boned meat were be­ing bought for pre­mium pet foods at prices that could not be matched by the hu­man food­ser­vice sec­tor.